Iran 01 (Jul 08 - Apr 18)

[winston]

Israel-Iran War in September?

Zerohedge is reporting on some very interesting positioning of U.S. naval ships:
Three carriers in proximity to Iran would be extremely troubling.

"There is almost "near certainty" that Netanyahu is "planning an attack [on Iran] ... and it will probably be in September before the vote on a Palestinian state. And he's also hoping to draw the United States into the conflict", Baer explained."

For the betting public out there, an September CL call may not be the dumbest trade possible...

All this is real interesting, but here's the real kicker: Economist Nouriel Roubini has tweeted the link to the ZeroHedge story.

I have never seen Roubini tweeting on foreign affairs before, he is unlikely to be tweeting because he finds the story interesting. The story likely falls in line with what he is hearing from his very in the know network.

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/20 ... ember.html

[winston]

Iran blamed U.S., Israel for killing of scientist

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A senior Iranian official on Sunday blamed the United States and Israel for the assassination of an Iranian scientist, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

Darioush Rezaie, 35, a university lecturer with a physics doctorate, was shot dead by a motorcyclist in Tehran on Saturday. The student news agency ISNA quoted an unnamed police official as saying Rezaie was a nuclear scientist but Deputy Interior Minister Safarali Baratlou said this was not certain.

"The terrorist U.S.-Israeli action yesterday, which targeted one of the country's scientific elites, is another example of the level of the U.S. animosity (against Iran), said parliament speaker Ali Larijani in a speech to the legislative body.

Iran's security apparatus is investigating the assassination, but no arrests have been reported.

Larijani also blamed "American adventurism" for the deaths on Friday of a senior commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards corps and five others in a land mine explosion on a road.

"The Americans who regard such measures in their so-called world management as permissible should think well about the consequences," Larijani said.

There has been no claim of responsibility for Rezaie's killing. Several nuclear scientists have been assassinated in Iran in the last few years. One scientist was killed and another wounded in Tehran in November.

Iran is at odds with the United States and its allies over its nuclear program, which the West says is a cover to build bombs. Iran, a major oil producer, denies this and says it is enriching uranium solely for civilian purposes.

Tehran's refusal to halt its enrichment work has led to the imposition of several rounds of sanctions by the United Nations, the European Union and the United States.

Source: Reuters US Online Report World News

[winston]

'US, Israeli mercenaries' blow up Iran-Turkey gas line

A bombing of a pipeline carrying gas from Iran to Turkey early Friday was carried out by "mercenaries" in the pay of Israel and the United States, and forced a cut in supply, Iranian officials said.

"The export of gas to Turkey has been temporarily halted after an explosion struck the pipeline" in northwestern Iran, spokesman for the National Iranian Gas Co (NIGC) Majid Boujarzadeh told the oil ministry's news agency SHANA.

According to Iranian media, the explosion occurred near the Bazargan border crossing, close to the city of Maku in Iran's West Azarbaijan province,

"The bombing which left no casualties ... occurred at the hands of Zionist and American mercenaries," Maku Governor Hamid Ahmadian told the ISNA news agency.

Bourjarzadeh said repair work on the pipeline was under way and expressed hope for a speedy resumption of the gas flow.

It is not the first time gas supplies to Turkey have been disrupted. In the summer of 2010, it was damaged twice in blasts blamed on separatist Kurdish rebels.

Iran, which has the second-largest proven gas reserves in the world after Russia, exports about 30 million cubic metres of gas to Turkey annually, according to deputy oil minister and chairman of the NIGC, Javad Ouji.

Source: AFP Global Edition

[winston]

getting close to that Sept deadline when Israel will take them out ...

Iran starts moving uranium centrifuges to bunker

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has started moving the machines that enrich nuclear fuel from the central city of Natanz to an underground bunker near the northern city of Qom, its top nuclear official was quoted as saying on Monday.

"Transferring Natanz centrifuges to Fordow (near Qom) is under way with full observance of standards," Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani told state broadcaster IRIB. "Fordow's facilities are being prepared and some centrifuges have been transferred."

Tehran announced in June that it would shift its production of higher-grade uranium to the underground facility in Fordow, in defiance of international calls to halt uranium enrichment which some countries say is aimed at making nuclear bombs, a charge Iran denies.

Source: Reuters US Online Report World News

[winston]

Tehran's Ghost Fleet

A Chinese state-owned firm in Hong Kong has been helping Iranian ships get around U.S. sanctions..

By CLAUDIA ROSETT

This June, a merchant ship flying the Hong Kong flag and sailing under the name of the Atlantic called at the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas—the southern end of a trade corridor to the U.S., advertised as "the fastest route to the heart of North America."

That might be unremarkable, except the Atlantic, formerly called the Dreamland, and before that the Iran Saeidi, belongs to a curious network of 19 bulk carriers, all flagged out of Hong Kong and all blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury for their links to Iran.

According to a recent transcript of Hong Kong's Marine Department Shipping Register, the Atlantic is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company called Harvest Supreme Limited.

Scratch the surface and Harvest Supreme tracks back to an Iranian address, as do 18 other obscure and interlinked Hong Kong ship-owning companies with names such as Grand Trinity Limited and Sparkle Brilliant Development Limited.

These are the hallmarks of the global shell game with which Iran continues to dodge U.S. and United Nations sanctions.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... lenews_wsj

[winston]

Reminder: See Posting on July 20, 2011 above

Israel to take out Iran in September. And it's now September.

[kennynah]

can israel win or not?

[winston]

Iran tells UN it will hit back at any attack

Iran warned it would "not hesitate" to hit back, following a foreign strike on its soil, in a formal complaint to the United Nations over a warning from French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Sarkozy said last week that Iran's "military, nuclear and ballistic ambitions constitute a growing threat that may lead to a preventive attack against Iranian sites, that would provoke a major crisis that France wants to avoid at all costs."

Source: AFP Global Edition

[winston]

Want to know whether they are going to start a war with Iran ? Then check out where the US warships are:

US Naval Update

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/ ... 11_800.jpg

[winston]

This issue has been coming up over and over again. No smoke without fire ?

US, UK 'Planning for War' Against Iran By Jim Meyers

Britain’s armed forces are accelerating contingency planning for a coordinated attack by the U.K. and United States, against Iran’s nuclear facilities amid growing concerns over the Iran’s weapons program.

The stepped-up planning for a strike comes in advance of a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) next week that could be a “game changer” regarding Iran’s nuclear program, the Guardian reported.

Sources in the British government and military have told The Guardian that President Obama is reluctant to launch an attack before next November’s election, but that could change in light of mounting anxiety over Iran’s nuclear development plans.

Adding to the urgency of dealing with Iran, officials now believe that the Islamic Republic has succeeded in restoring all the development capability it lost in a sophisticated cyber-attack last year.

The Stuxnet computer worm, thought to have been engineered by the Americans and Israelis, sabotaged many of the centrifuges the Iranians were using to enrich uranium.

“It is estimated that Iran, which has consistently said it is interested only in developing a civilian nuclear energy program, already has enough enriched uranium for between two and four nuclear weapons,” The Guardian disclosed.

Also, the newspaper reported, one British official said that within the next 12 months, Iran may have hidden all the material it needs to continue a weapons development program inside fortified bunkers, and “this had necessitated the U.K.’s planning being taken to a new level.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly urging a pre-emptive strike against Iran.

The United States currently has about 98,000 troops in Afghanistan, to the east of Iran, and 43,500 in Iraq, to the west. The U.K. has nearly 10,000 troops in Afghanistan.

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Iran-w ... /id/416733